Philip was never certain when the girl was bantering him; nor, when she was in earnest, how long she would remain in that mind and mood.  So he ventured, humorously: 

“The truth is, Celia, that you know too much to be either.  You are what they call emancipated.”

“Emancipated!” And Celia sat up energetically, as if she were now really interested in the conversation.  “Become the slave of myself instead of the slave of somebody else!  That’s the most hateful thing to be, emancipated.  I never knew a woman who said she was emancipated who wasn’t in some ridiculous folly or another.  Now, Phil, I’m going to tell you something.  I can tell you.  You know I’ve been striving to have a career, to get out of myself somehow, and have a career for myself.  Well, today—­mind, I don’t say tomorrow”—­(and there was a queer little smile on her lips)—­“I think I will just try to be good to people and things in general, in a human way.”

“And give up education?”

“No, no.  I get my living by education, just as you do, or hope to do, by law or by letters; it’s all the same.  But wait.  I haven’t finished what I was going to say.  The more I go into psychology, trying to find out about my mind and mind generally, the more mysterious everything is.  Do you know, Phil, that I’m getting into the supernatural?  You can’t help running into it.  For me, I am not side-tracked by any of the nonsense about magnetism and telepathy and mind-reading and other psychic imponderabilities.  Isn’t it queer that the further we go into science the deeper we go into mystery?

“Now, don’t be shocked, I mean it reverently, just as an illustration.  Do you think any one knows really anything more about the operation in the world of electricity than he does about the operation of the Holy Ghost?  And yet people talk about science as if it were something they had made themselves.”

“But, Celia—­”

“No, I’ve talked enough.  We are in this world and not in some other, and I have to make my living.  Let’s go into the other room and see the old masters.  They, at least, knew how to paint—­to paint passion and character; some of them could paint soul.  And then, Phil, I shall be hungry.  Talking about the mind always makes me hungry.”

XI

Philip was always welcome at his uncle’s house in Rivervale.  It was, of course, his home during his college life, and since then he was always expected for his yearly holiday.  The women of the house made much of him, waited on him, deferred to him, petted him, with a flattering mingling of tenderness to a little boy and the respect due to a man who had gone into the world.  Even Mr. Maitland condescended to a sort of equality in engaging Philip in conversation about the state of the country and the prospects of business in New York.